Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 OLD VERSION

Has all I need
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Just upgraded from Ver 5 because 7 supports RAW for my Nikon D90 and 5 didn’t. Great product with all the editing features that I need and seamlessly transitions between Organizer mode and Editor mode. The Organizer and albums feature was a pleasant surprise finally giving me an organizational mechanism after having simply used a hierarchical folder structure in Windows Explorer for the last 7 years. Ver 8 was just released but expanded features aren’t anything I need so really happy with 7 (keep in mind I was getting along fine in Ver 5 despite the RAW capability).

The box says minimum system requirements of 1GB RAM. I have exactly 1GB and the computer does great for most things but bogs down if I do complex layers or have multiple files open. I’m going to be upgrading my RAM to 2GB which is really cheap and going to have huge payoff. Make sure you heed the RAM requirements.

Smart brush rocks!

PSE 7 is crap
Rating:1 out of 5 stars
With as much experience as Adobe has, a product as buggy as PSE 7 should not even be released. After several months of trying to work with it, I’ve uninstalled it from my PC. What a piece of junk.

A Terrific Program
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I have been watching this product for months and am now using it to correct many of my mistakes. So far I like it but have only been a user for about 3 weeks. It will do some fantastic things as soon as I figure out how to work everything.

Not User Friendly and a Rebate Rip-off.
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 feels more like a down grade from Adobe Photoshop Elements 4. The features are very difficult to learn and use. The experience with Elements 4 is completely wasted because Elements 7 looks and feels like it was made by a completely different company. The “Organize” feature is worthless. This feature is intended to help you “organize” and manage picture files. It is very confusing. I simply use Windows XP to make a folder for each year, such as Photos-2009. The yearly folder contains subject sub-folder with names for family members, vacations, holidays, etc. It is very easy to setup and any picture can be found quickly. Simply copy the yearly folder to a CD as a backup.

REBATE RIP-OFF

Don’t buy Adobe Photoshop expecting to receive the rebate described on the advertisement or box. You are wasting your time filling out the complicated application. I complete the rebate instructions perfectly and mailed it in. A few days later I received an email notice that my rebate application was received. The email was dated exactly four weeks after the Amazon invoice order date. Two weeks later I received a postcard in snail mail informing me that the rebate application was invalid because the application was not receive within six weeks after the invoice date. Actually, it was only four weeks and well within the rebate limit. Search the Internet for “Adobe rebate rip-offs.” You will find hundreds of complaints. This appears to me as a major case of consumer fraud. Hopefully a good lawyer will file a class action lawsuit to stop it.

ENDLESS UPGRADES

You can expect your new Adobe Photoshop software to be out of date within weeks. They are turning out upgrades like a quarterly report. Most likely the new features on the upgrade are something you will never use. Actually, my old Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 was better than the new Elements 7 which is now out of date because Elements 8 has appeared.

Kent Rieske

Boulder, CO 80301

A Huge Upgrade From My Older Version 4
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I can understand that those who had Elements version 6 were a bit underwhelmed when they bought version 7, but my previous version of Elements was 4. The upgrade in features and options from 4 is fantastic.

Many of the processes that I used to manipulate digital photos in v4 are exactly the same, but some are just a bit different, but not enough to get upset over.

When I bought v4, I also bought Scott Kelby’s “The Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers.” With that one book I was able to do almost everything I ever wanted to attempt to do on a digital photo. I cannot tell you just how great Scott Kelby’s Elements books are.

So when I bought this Elements 7, I bought Scott Kelby’s “The Photoshop Elements 7 Book for Digital Photographers” along with it. I’m so glad I did. So once v7 was installed, I was able to do much that I had learned with v4, but also tried a few new tricks that v7 has, and Mr. Kelby’s book showed me how to do these things step by step.

The biggest pleasant surprise with Elements 7 over v4 was how much more you can now do with RAW images.

I had bought Nikon Capture 4, Nikon’s image manipulation program, several years ago when I bought a Nikon D70s. I simply found I could do exactly what I wanted in Elements much easier than with Nikon Capture 4. I eventually stopped even using Nikon Capture 4 for my Nikon RAW images after I spent half a Saturday opening a RAW image and working with it first in Nikon Capture 4 and then opening the same RAW image with Elements and doing similar actions on the photo, then comparing the two final results. With about 30 images done, some with basic adjustments and others with serious changes, I was unable to tell which program I had used to create the final results. BUT, Elements was so much easier and smoother to work with than was Nikon Capture that I simple uninstalled Capture and used only Elements.

Now with Elements 7′s expanded RAW file features, I didn’t make the mistake of buying the new Nikon Capture NX, though I did download the free 30 day trial of Capture NX, with the same result as before. My final images from Elements 7 vs Nikon Capture NX were indistinguishable, and Elements is still much more intuitive to me and simple things like being able to adjust contrast by spinning my mouse’s scroll wheel in Elements but not in most areas of Capture NX led me to uninstall the Capture NX version like I had with Capture 4.

With Elements 7, Scott Kelby’s Elements 7 book, and the many hundreds of Elements helps on the internet, I feel prepared for just about anything.

I was able to repair some badly torn prints for friends that I scanned, repairing with the old Elements 4, so with all the new features of Elements 7, I’m excited about what I’ll be able to do with it over the next few years.

So far I’ve mostly been pulling in RAW images and making most of the changes I need in the RAW editor in Elements, and then any final touches in Elements 7 editor and then convert to .jpg files.

If you are brand new to image manipulation, I can heartily recommend Elements 7, but you should probably buy a more basic book for your first images. But I would recommend getting Scott Kelby’s Elements 7 book too, because there’s just too much good stuff in there that is taught to you baby step by baby step, and you’ll be ready for Mr. Kelby’s book really soon anyway.

A good choose
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
This is an excellent product to amateur photographer, it have all that I need to improve my pictures in a easy way.

Very Frustrating program with limited features.
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
I’m a .net programmer who is used to using Microsoft applications which although sometimes are buggy they are still intuitive to use. I use Photoshop to convert psd files to html/css. I decided to purchase this product in order to avoid the hefty price tag for the CS version. All I need to do is splice the document up and make a few changes. I found this program so difficult to use and buggy. Here are the main problems I had with it.

There was no support for layered groups. I had to tell people who send me psd files to ungroup all their layers.

There was no slice tool which is a tool I use often.

There was no trim option in the image menu dropdown. This is another feature which I use often to slice up photoshop files for the web.

I had a lot of problems with the “save for web” option which I always use in the CS version. For some oddball reason I would choose jpg and it would turn them into gif’s. It would also splice up the images in a weird way. I looked for the “remove slices” option that CS4 has but couldn’t find it. I ended up not being able to even use the “save for web” option.

There was no support for creating guides. I cant believe this isn’t in there. I always use guides to slice and crop the psd images correctly.

For some odd reason the effects palette completely stopped working. All the effects options were gone. I couldn’t get them back no matter what I tried. The whole effects palette was essentially broken. I finally just had to reinstall the program.

This program can be very frustrating. It’s not a program that an intelligent person can just figure out. You have to read a lot to do things exactly the way it wants. I definitely don’t recommend this program to anyone unless you have a ton of patience and can put up with tons and tons of missing features.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This product does more than any other similar photo software I have, which is both good and bad. Photoshop Elements 7 is very complicated and will take me a while to understand how to use all the features. Now I know why Amazon suggests one of the how-to books to purchase along with the software. Adobe’s site offers some short tutorial’s on it, but not in-depth enough to be able to watch one and then go to the Full Edit function and start working. I just ordered one of the books on Amazon and hope this will help me learn how to use the full editing features, which is why I bought this in the first place.

ok, better than what comes with the camera
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
my elements 5 never worked well with either xp or vista so when it once again froze I figured I’d upgrade with 7. It works much better with vista, looks nicer, resembles Lightroom more than the old version I had. I don’t use the organizer so I HATE that unlike 5 I can not chose not to use it and have to make sure the box is unchecked or my files load to it if I open it by mistake. waste of space since i save catalog them elsewhere

I normally use lightroom 2 but occasionally use elements for some ‘crafty ” stuff IE textures and the like, since I can’t load 16 bit into painter x. for that it is good and is much better for general cloning and basics than other software programs that are freebies or come with cameras. imo it’s probably worth the money for most people, more serious photographers probably wouldn’t use it as much especially if they shoot in RAW since it still doesn’t really have anything great for that.( camera raw will open with mine but i prefer lightroom over camera raw)

Great product!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I wanted to have a product to manage my pictures and Adobe photoshop is wonderful. It even repairs the red-eye in a click of the mouse. I would recommend this program and Amazone is a good place to buy it.

PHotoshop Elements 7 is rich in features
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
We purchased photoshop elements 6 a while back and upgraded to photoshop elements 7 recently. My wife and I really like the rich feature set and flexibility of this product. We also purchased a tutorial and are learning new things about it every day. We love the automatic download from camera, red-eye removal picture sharpening and other standard features. We have also amazed ourselves using a feature that empowers you to extract the “good” part of photo #1 and use it to replace the “bad” part of photo #2. This has been useful when taking multiple pictures of a small group of people where somebody is always looking the wrong way or has their eyes closed or whatever, and replacing that person with their image from a photo that is much better. We really like this product and continually are learning new things about it.

The only downside we have noticed is that it takes several seconds longer for Photoshop Elements 7 to come up onto the screen than its predecessor. A small obstacle to overcome for all the benefits.

element 7
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
With the introduction of Element 8 this is now outdated. I was/am taking a class in photo editing that is based on Element 7. It is going to do everything I need in the forseeable future.